I’ve always had a flat bum. It never bothered me too much – it was just my genetic lot – but recently my barely-there rear had begun to feel randomly numb and sometimes painful. I was also getting regular pain in my lower back and occasionally my hip. This year, at the ripe age of 31, I decided the solution was to finally take up strength training.
Starting to weightlift, I realised I couldn’t feel anything in my glutes. My legs, hips, arms and shoulders were all burning from the exercise, but it was as if my bum had left the gym. I would only feel sensation there when I sat down afterwards – a numbness that veered into pain, especially if I sat for a long time, or tried the exercises again.
In an effort to understand why this was happening, I started to do some research – and came across something known as “dead bum syndrome”, or gluteal amnesia. While not a medical diagnosis, dead bum syndrome is used to describe what happens when the glute muscles, through lack of use, seem to “forget” their purpose. Unlike when a limb “falls asleep” and you get pins and needles, gluteal amnesia is not the result of a compressed nerve but a muscle being slow to fire when signalled by the brain.
And according to physiotherapists, it’s very common.
What is dead bum syndrome?
In order to understand the syndrome, you first need to understand the gluteus muscles. The glutes are made up of a few different muscles, explains physiotherapist Nell Mead. “There are the ones that make you move, and the ones that hold you and maintain your posture. The big one, the gluteus maximus, is the mover, and the gluteus medius and minimus are the stabilisers.”
Problems start when the glute max is not functioning properly – meaning the smaller muscles start compensating for the bigger ones, explains Nick Potter, consultant osteopath at King Edward VII hospital in Marylebone, London. The muscles activating in the wrong sequence can lead to your joint becoming a bit jammed – resulting in a flat bum like mine, and pain in all sorts of places, including the hips, back and knees.
“There are 34 different muscles that attach to the pelvis from below the knees to about your shoulder blades,” adds Mead. “So without your glutes supporting the pelvis, anywhere between that range can be affected.”
What causes dead bum syndrome?
The cause seems to be quite simple: living a largely sedentary lifestyle.
“Sedentary lifestyle leads to a kind of dysfunction,” Mead says. “I see this in the city with people who sit down on their commute, then they sit down at work and then in the evening, they might do some exercise so they sit on an exercise bike, and then they’ll sit for dinner and to relax on the sofa.
“Their back and hips aren’t really moving all day and that’s dysfunctional. We’re not meant to sit all day, we’re meant to move.”
Mead could be describing me. I spend long hours each day sitting at my desk, and although I exercise, the main form is cycling – during which I’m sitting on my bike. Prior to beginning strength training, the only time my glutes were directly engaged was when climbing the stairs.
The kinetic chain that supports our pelvis and back, Potter says, is deactivated when we sit all day. This can lead to a loss of muscle mass in the rear, meaning you sit on other muscles.
The posture you adopt while sitting affects that too. If you cross your legs you are likely to favour one side over another, creating an asymmetry that leads to dysfunction. “Any posture that is adopted too frequently and for too long can have an impact,” Mead says.
Admittedly, dead bum syndrome isn’t always due to a sedentary lifestyle; it can also happen as the result of an injury or another source of pain.
How to spot and treat dead bum syndrome
Even if you’re someone who’s fit and works out regularly, you may have weak or inactive glute muscles because you don’t actually engage them when exercising: doing deadlifts from your quads, using your back muscles for bridges, running only on flat surfaces with shorter strides.
There are, however, tests you can do. Mead has three she asks of clients in clinic: whether they can switch on their left and right glutes alternatively; whether they can do it while sitting, standing or lying down and whether they can feel their glute before their hamstring when they lift their legs up straight behind them while lying on their stomach. Finally, she asks if clients can do a “clamshell” or knee lift without their hip flexors kicking in.
I found I could only manage only the first and second tests. For the others, I had my hands on my hamstrings/hip flexors and could feel them immediately jumping in to compensate.
So I began a concentrated effort to train my glutes. This meant focusing on my form when doing squats, lunges and deadlifts – I am now increasing weight, but very slowly. Often I will lift heavier and realise I can’t actually feel my glutes – so instead of listening to my ego, I drop my weight back down.
Mead urges doing specific muscle warm-ups before any workout if your glutes are weak. Doing bodyweight bridges (where you lie on your back and lift your pelvic bone to the ceiling while leaning on your shoulders, arms by your side) or either of her test exercises will prime your lesser-used muscles to engage from the get-go, rather than lagging behind.
Nick Potter adds that a great glute workout, even for those with weak glutes, is to make use of the hill settings on a treadmill. “The thing I give patients to fire them up is I encourage them to put the treadmill up to 12 per cent and power walk for about 4km to 6km per hour for a minimum of 10 minutes,” he says. “You’ll be amazed how your bum develops.”
Workouts are not the only way you can wake your glutes up. Every day on his way to work, Potter says, he tries to walk quicker than everybody else.
“The things that set up glute activation is powerful (not power) walking – just add an inch,” he advises. “Don’t try and change how you walk, just increase your stride length by an inch and stand up straight. That will activate your glutes and you will feel better.”
Having tried all of these things for the past month or so, I can attest that not only is my back pain retreating but also, after recent workouts I have felt my glutes not just present but burning, finally awoken from their 31-year long slumber. Welcome back, friends.
